Larry Bell caught the Los Angeles art wave in the late 1950s and has been successfully
navigating those often turbulent waters ever since. Instead of looking to art history for
guidance like their New York counterparts, Bell and a handful of renegade Southern
California artists found inspiration in their immediate surroundings—lackluster
architecture, tacky billboards, and the prevalent hot-rod and surf cultures of their day.

“There is a tendency out here to not care about art history because we’re a young
city,” conceptual artist John Baldessari told filmmaker Morgan Neville in the 2008
film The Cool School: How L.A. Learned to Love Modern Art. “We don’t have to deal
with our past because there is no past.” Employing nontraditional methods and
materials—from assemblage of found objects to spray paint and techniques used in
surfboard construction—the L.A. artists were making a significant splash. And for
Bell, this approach was a perfect fit.

Bell was born in Chicago but raised in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley, in an environment
virtually bereft of a modern art culture. At 17, a brief but pivotal stint at
Chouinard Art Institute starting in 1957 would change the trajectory of his life. In
Bell’s day, the school was known as “the mouse house” because of its reputation as
a training ground for Walt Disney Studios. “I went off to art school with the intention
of learning to be an animator,” Bell says. “But I liked the painting instructors better
than the technical ones, so I changed my whole focus to fine art.”

At Chouinard, Bell was impressed as much by the forward-thinking and unconventional
lifestyles of his peers and instructors—especially early installation art pioneer
Robert Irwin—as he was by their work. “Larry was thrilled by the racial and social
mix of the student body, as was I,” classmate Dean Cushman recalls. “It was truly
exciting to be around so many different lifestyles, opinions, and talents.” Mere miles
from the white-bread values of the then-ultraconservative San Fernando Valley of his
youth, 19-year-old Bell was suddenly immersed in a tidal wave of cultural upheaval.

Initially inf luenced by the Abstract Expressionists, particularly Willem de Kooning,
Bell began by painting on canvas but quickly became interested in hard-edged shapes.
A part-time job at a framing shop further shifted his focus. Working around glass
gave him the idea to stick a piece onto one of his canvases. “It looked great,” he says,
“and I eventually decided that I was just making illustrations of volumes when what
I really wanted to do was make the volumes themselves.” Thus began the creation
of glass cubes and large glass installations—and the lifelong fascination with light,
ref lection, and surface that would define Bell’s career.

As early as 1961, Bell’s work was shown at L.A.’s Huysman Gallery on La Cienega
Boulevard, along with Ed Bereal, Joe Goode, and Ron Miyashiro, in a group exhibition
titled War Babies: 1937–1961. One year later his first solo show opened across the street at the legendary Ferus Gallery. Bell soon joined John Altoon,
Billy Al Bengston, Robert Irwin, Ed Kienholz, Ed Moses, Ken
Price, and others as the youngest member of Ferus’ stable of
rock star–style artists. Their sweeping significance is illustrated
in The Cool School documentary. Almost overnight, it seemed,
L.A.’s once bland, conservative cultural landscape had transformed
into a vital art scene thanks to Bell and his fellow artists.

In 1964 gallery owner Sidney Janis noticed Bell’s work and
included the glass cubes in a group show at his gallery in New York
City. This, in turn, led to a sold-out solo show at the Pace Gallery in
1965 and a brief move to New York. But, missing friends and the
West Coast lifestyle, Bell moved back to California in 1966, settling
into a studio in what was then Venice’s low-rent artist district.

In The Cool School documentary, art critic Peter Plagens recalls,
“In those days in L.A., there were two kinds of artists: those
of us who were teaching, who were basically wusses because we
wanted a salary and security and stuff like that . . . and the real
artists, guys who were living by their wits and renting storefronts
down in Venice.”

Curator Hal Glickman adds, “Wallace Berman was the one
who said you could be an artist, a real artist, in Los Angeles, and
that there you could live a life of poetic poverty.”

As the 1960s morphed into the 1970s, Bell worked in the thick
of an increasingly exciting time to be a young artist in L.A. Along
with a range of cultural icons, he was chosen to be included on
the legendary album cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band, designed by Peter Blake. And Bell’s 1971
acting debut was documented for posterity in a lead role in
one of Ed Ruscha’s obscure art films, Premium, a 24-minute,
16-mm romp featuring model Léon Bing, comedian Tommy
Smothers, and designer Rudi Gernreich.

But the art scene was also notoriously social, and the demands
to see and be seen, however enjoyable, were taking their toll.
Thinking a change of pace would benefit his art, in 1973 Bell
followed longtime friend Ken Price to Taos, New Mexico. “I’m
a party guy,” Bell says, with a boyish grin. “If I allow myself to
be distracted by poker and hanging out at the bars, it breaks my
concentration. In Taos there is much less temptation. It’s easier
to control one’s distractions here.”

In Taos Bell continued to gain international recognition for
his early explorations in light and illusion, from glass cubes and
large glass sculptural installations to applying similar surface
techniques to paper and canvas in the Vapor Drawings and Mirage
Paintings series. He even made a foray into furniture design in the
early ’80s. Asked by longtime friend Frank Gehry to collaborate on
a commission for Cleveland client Peter B. Lewis in the late ’90s,
Bell developed a series of calligraphic stickmen, some of which
have been transformed into large bronze figures he calls Sumer
Figures. Like his furniture making, these stickmen seem to have
no parallel in either Bell’s earlier work or his current explorations
into light and surface, until one learns that he had a talent for
drawing cartoonlike characters in high school.

Still, the series Fractions (small collage compositions made
from pieces of previous works on paper) that followed was in
keeping with Bell’s earlier passion. As the late Douglas Kent Hall
observes in an essay titled “Strange Days: Conversations with the
Doctor,” “No matter what new material he explores, Bell keeps
coming back to glass. He attempts to translate the qualities he
achieves on glass to other surfaces, other materials. For example,
his series of elegant vapor drawings on paper, their thin coatings
identical to those he lays onto glass, assume a mysterious
other-worldliness.”

Although he was enamored with the life and career he had
built in Taos, in 2004 Bell found he was once again missing his
West Coast friends and lifestyle. By an odd twist of fate, the same
studio he had back in the day was available for rent. The current
owners had made improvements, and though the rent had increased
a bit from the $75/month Bell once paid, he nonetheless
jumped at the chance to lease it.

Some artists might find the duality of keeping two studios
unsettling, but for Bell the arrangement is grounding—and each
location has its advantages. “Taos is much more livable than Venice,
but Venice has a unique creative energy and magic,” he says. “In
the studio I have there, I have been incredibly productive. It may
have less to do with the places themselves than with my focusing and not being distracted. Sometimes I just sit and look
at stuff. Or just not think about working until the muse
comes around and kicks me out of my chair.” But these
days, whether in his Taos studio or Venice space, Bell says,
“I’m there to work.”

As for the commute, the 74-year-old Bell enjoys the
road time as a chance to unplug, with his American
bulldog, Pinky, in tow as copilot. “I turn off the radio,
take out my hearing aids, and just drive. It is as close to
a religious experience as I get—16 to 17 hours of meditation
and random thoughts. I get some great ideas on the
road, but I usually forget them,” he says, grinning. “The
only distraction is my CB radio because when you are
out there, the only important news is what’s happening a
mile ahead of you.”

It’s easy to trace the evolution of much of Bell’s work.
Pieces are sequentially numbered, and materials from
one series tend to show up differently configured in new
work. Bell’s most recent series, Light Knots, are threedimensional
kinetic forms made of Mylar film that Bell
cuts, folds, and coats with vaporized metallic particles in
a nine-ton vacuum tank in his Taos studio. “Light Knots
came right out of these things,” Bell explains, gesturing
toward a piece from his Mirage Works series. “Those have
50 or so layers of Mylar, but I began manipulating individual
sheets making sculptural forms. [The light knots]
just fell out of the work. In a strange way the work makes
itself—and it is always honest. [A kernel of future art] is
always locked inside the [present] work . . . you just somehow
have to find it. But the next thing is always there.”

As Bell points out in an interview for a recent show in
Southern California, the light knots reward the patient
viewer, revealing themselves over time as they revolve
elegantly with the slightest air current and display infinite
gradations of color, opacity, and ref lection as well as
myriad variations of form. Bell’s son, videographer Oliver
Bell, documented the knots’ undisturbed reaction to
natural light. “It was wonderful!” Bell enthuses. “Ollie set
up his camera in the studio one evening and let it run all
night. The next day he came running in and said, ‘You’ve
got to see this.’ Holy cow! I hadn’t seen the light play on
them that way. It was a gift from the work to me.”

Over the years, writers and critics have lumped Bell’s
work into various camps, calling him, among other
things, a Perceptualist, Abstract Expressionist, and member
of the Light and Space movement. “I’ve never really
thought of myself as a Minimalist either, but I’ve been
included in that, too,” he says. “I just appreciate the fact
that anyone considers my work in any way. I have always
just trusted the work. I have been included in a lot of different
movements, and in most cases I never even thought
about the intellect of a movement regarding what I am
doing. Everyone’s perception of a trip is different, and I see
my trip in a different way than most people.”

However Bell’s trip is perceived, his work continues to
garner worldwide respect and is included in the Museum
of Modern Art in New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute
of Chicago, the Massachusetts Institute for Technology,
the Tate Modern Gallery in London, Museum Ludwig in
Cologne, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Walker
Art Center in Minneapolis, the San Francisco Museum of
Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

The Taos studio brims with activity this year, as Bell’s
long-standing personal assistant and loyal friend, Lois
Rodin, juggles many calendars and time zones. Artwork
from exhibits in France and Southern California are
returning to Taos, while other shows are being organized.
The London gallery White Cube Bermondsey will exhibit
Bell’s work in mid-October. Obviously pleased, Bell says,
“They want to show works on paper and my collage work,
which no major gallery has ever been interested in before.
Collages, vapor drawings, and the light knots.”

Meanwhile, Bell and veteran studio assistant, artist
Cody Riddle, are busy inventorying various glass pieces
in storage to create a composition for a possible yearlong
installation at the Chinati Foundation contemporary art
museum in Marfa, Texas. “One thought being considered
[for the Marfa show] is to tie the glass sculptures into the
light knots in some manner because the knots ref lect,
absorb, and transmit light, just like the glass. But in the
glass it is all based on right-angle relationships, whereas
there are no right angles in the knots,” Bell explains.

In the midst of yet another exciting run with the Light
Knots series—and with national and international exhibitions
on the calendar—Bell is still successfully riding that
wave he caught decades ago in Los Angeles. When asked
about highlights of the ride so far, he assumes a ref lective
tone. “My life is filled with highlights. Just getting up in
the morning is a highlight. Having work where the energy
is self-propagating, where the energy you put out creates
even more energy, is a highlight, as is a good work run
that lasts six to seven months. Stumbling over accidental
things and finding that the thing I stumbled across is
actually the next step is always exciting.” Pausing thoughtfully,
Bell adds, “My trip has been full of these things.”